100
Slant Magazine by Ed Gonzalez
Polanski brilliantly evokes an evil society’s almost supernatural ability to recognize weakness in others and to punish all that is good.
The Tenant (Le locataire)
Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
- France
- 1976
- · 125m
Director
Roman Polanski
Cast
Roman Polanski,
Isabelle Adjani,
Melvyn Douglas,
Bernard Fresson,
Shelley Winters,
Gérard Jugnot
Genre
Drama,
Horror,
Thriller
Trelkovsky has just begun renting apartment in Paris after its previous tenant died following a suicide attempt. When he encounters extreme hostility from the landlord and neighbors, Trelkovsky finds himself identifying with the dead tenant in terrifying ways. Could these people be turning him into their next dead tenant?
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What are critics saying?
88
Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington
Terrifying and darkly funny. [13 Jun 2004, p.C4]
83
IndieWire by Max O'Connell
The film’s thesis isn’t as clear as his earlier efforts, but it’s still a highly effective story about how the world’s insanity poisons the mind.
80
The New York Times by Vincent Canby
The film is superbly acted by Mr. Polanski, Mr. Douglas and Miss Winters, who might not be entirely convincing as a Parisian concierge in a realistic film, but who fits into this nightmare perfectly.
80
Village Voice by J. Hoberman
it may be the director's quintessential movie. It's an exercise in urban paranoia and mental disintegration that echoes or anticipates everything from "Repulsion" and "Rosemary's Baby" to "Bitter Moon" and "The Pianist."
80
Empire by Kim Newman
A disturbing and poignant anthology of Roman Polanski's favourite, oppressive themes.
75
TV Guide Magazine
Technically, The Tenant is superb, with stunning camerawork by Sven Nykvist, an eerie score by Philippe Sarde, and thoroughly convincing performances from the entire cast. (Review of original release)
75
The A.V. Club by Noel Murray
Though the result is too slow and curious, with a weak lead performance by the writer-director, The Tenant's tone of abstracted anxiety is distinctive, and its central message, that the obnoxious define the world for everyone else, provides another tile in Polanski's career mosaic of paranoia and power brokerage.
75
TV Guide Magazine by Staff (Not Credited)
Technically, The Tenant is superb, with stunning camerawork by Sven Nykvist, an eerie score by Philippe Sarde, and thoroughly convincing performances from the entire cast. (Review of original release)
70
Chicago Reader by Dave Kehr
The end result is somewhere between Franz Kafka and William Castle, but still worth seeing.
60
Variety
A tale of a paranoid breakdown of a little bureaucratic clerk that wastes no time in trying to be clinical. It has a humorous tang, underlying the macabre. (Review of original release)
60
Variety by Staff (Not Credited)
A tale of a paranoid breakdown of a little bureaucratic clerk that wastes no time in trying to be clinical. It has a humorous tang, underlying the macabre. (Review of original release)
50
Time Out
Everything except the dubbing of the French supporting cast is a model of craftsmanship, but as the plot escalates into increasingly arbitrary excesses of fantasy and heads for the predictable pay-off, the movie looks more and more like a potboiler.
25
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
The Tenant's not merely bad -- it's an embarrassment. If it didn't have the Polanski trademark, we'd probably have to drive miles and miles and sit in a damp basement to see it.
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